January 4, 2014

2. I have no idea how accurate it is, but I know that the GQ article calls it "a ghostwritten book he says he has never read." I assume he talked to the ghostwriter and didn't check the ghost's work by sitting down and reading through the book. I'd be interested to know what books Phil does read. He reads the Bible. I got that. Phil purports to be such a godly man that I feel entitled to believe the book is accurate, but it has the feeling of PR, and I took it in that spirit.

3. My favorite part of the book was the first chapter, his boyhood, especially all the stuff about living off the land:

My intention was not malicious, but I broke the ground rule that families are off-limits, and for that I am sorry.

Also, allow me to apologize to other families formed through transracial adoption, because I am deeply sorry that we suggested that interracial families are in any way funny or deserving of ridicule. On this program we are dedicated to advocating for a wide diversity of families. It is one of our core principles....

Here's my post from New Year's Eve covering the controversy. I said: "Quite aside from racial politics, I thought children were off limits. Here you have an MSNBC panel segment planned around laughing at a baby. We scrupulously avoid using Obama's daughters as raw material for jokes. Why didn't anyone at MSNBC nix this?"

Speaking of "core principles," balanced journalism should also be a core principle. If you find you forget your core principles when you see ways to take shots at political candidates you oppose, then you're also forgetting the core principle of balanced journalism. You're doubling up on the forgetting of core principles. And it's so easy to test yourself: Imagine that conservative is a liberal (or vice versa).

“At the moment, there is no presence of the Iraqi state in Fallujah,” said a local journalist who asked not to be named because he fears for his safety. “The police and the army have abandoned the city, al-Qaeda has taken down all the Iraqi flags and burned them, and it has raised its own flag on all the buildings.”

At Friday prayers, held outdoors and attended by thousands of people, a masked ISIS fighter took the podium and addressed the crowd, declaring the establishment of an “Islamic emirate” in Fallujah and promising to help residents fight the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his Iranian allies....

His public persona is friendly but guarded.... So working as a television personality seems a strange choice; it’s likely to foreground all the things he has been so keen to leave in the background — his looks, his family, his private life.

Oh, no, no, no, no, don't speak about how beautiful I am. Do put that in the background. I'm so keen to put that in the background. And in the foreground, please put... what? What the hell else is there? Why is this lad on television and in The New York Times?

After Terri Schiavo, you’d think more conservatives would be lining up to side with the 13-year-old’s family....

For some reason, Jahi’s condition doesn’t seem to resonate the same way. The silence from the right is rather deafening, with almost no political movement—other than the Schiavo family’s personal outreach—for Jahi. It's easier, apparently, to move legislative mountains for a white woman in conservative Florida precincts than it is for a black girl from ardently liberal, urban Oakland, Calif.

The Schiavo case involved a conflict between parents who wanted to keep their daughter alive and a husband with the legal power to procure her departure.

“I learned to lie. I couldn’t tell other kids I went to the hospital and had my genitals chopped up again.” He lived with a plastic tube attached to his genitals so that he could stand to pee; his urinary opening came at the base, not the tip, of his penis. Cosmetic surgery should not be performed on infants, he insists. “If they choose, later, to have a surgery—if it’s their choice. If I’d had the chance to do that, I wouldn’t have gone quite so horrible an adolescence, quite so difficult an identify formation as an adult.”

“Remember: your kid is going to want his genitals. Your kid is going to want her genitals.... ”

MEANWHILE: The Pope leaves a phone message: "What can the nuns be doing that stops them answering the phone?... This is Pope Francis... I wanted to give you New Year's greetings. I'll see if I can reach you later. God bless you."

So how did master-hacker Barnaby Jack — who was only 36 — die? The coroner's report is in, and it seems that the expert at computer hacking lacked comparable genius in mixing drugs. He died of "acute mixed drug intoxication... an accidental overdose of heroin, cocaine, and prescription drugs."

[I]n spite of his rock-star status and brilliance as an orator, Clinton has questionable value as a symbol of the kind of progressive change de Blasio has promised. He’s more accurately a symbol of dashed progressive hopes....

In office, however, Bill Clinton pushed NAFTA over labor’s objections and sought Most Favored Nation trading status for China in the face of severe human rights concerns. He waived human rights requirements to facilitate Plan Colombia, which provided military aid to the Bogota government. He oversaw much of the financial deregulation that enabled the 2007–08 financial crisis. He widened federal authority to impose the death penalty. He signed into law the harsh 1996 immigration bill, backed measures that vastly expanded executive power to fight “terrorism” and supported the odious Defense of Marriage Act.

For a reputed loner, Mr. Obama has remained remarkably close to a trio he met as a teenager at Honolulu’s prestigious Punahou School — boys of Hawaii’s year-round summer with whom he played basketball, bodysurfed, drank beer and, like so many other young islanders in the 1970s, smoked pot, the “choom” of that long-ago nickname....

The annual gatherings perhaps speak to Mr. Obama’s greater need for their connection now that he has what is called the loneliest job in the world...

That first year, [Mike] Ramos said, “I remember coming home from a golf outing and literally starting to cry,” so emotional was the contrast he felt between their friendships and the “transactional” ones he said he had since formed as a businessman. “For me it’s the unconditional love, it’s the nontransactional nature of the relationship — that enduring quality — that is something that I really value,” he said.

Are your friendships so transactional you could cry?

IN THE COMMENTS: MayBee said:

They didn't start meeting annually unti 2004, when Obama decided to run for Senate and he needed a fresh group of friends for his biography....

It says something pretty funny about politics when an article about the Presidents's friends has a quote about the importance of friends from the "long time" political strategist. And yes, Axelrod was Obama's strategist when Obama decided to start the annual get together with them.

Doesn't that just scream "these friends are part of a political strategy! This article is part of that strategy!"

Photos of real foxes, the actual red-furred creatures. I'm not using the word in any metaphorical sense. These are real foxes, in the snow, at the Capitol. It's not all protesters around here. I love it. Real foxes. I guess the extreme cold brought them out.

As it happens, I had a huge crush from age 8 or so on a boy who was 16, John, who was a neighbor in Kingston, Jamaica. He asked my father to help him run away, which my father did. My father also taught John to play the guitar and sail. John went on to spend the rest of his life, mostly playing guitar and sailing. But he also worked for many years the road manager for the Everly Brothers, which I found out in the early 1990's after not seeing John for decades.

So I called up the Everly Brothers' office in Nashville, left a voicemail and sure enough, several days later, I heard from John, who invited me to Atlantic City, to hear the Everly Brothers play and meet him. John also opened for the Everly Brothers at times or played with the band.

Off I went, to awful Atlantic City, to the casino-hotel they were playing to a sad, scant audience of blue rinse ladies and really elderly folk, met the Everly Brothers, heard them sing and saw John again after decades.

Suddenly, this picture comes back to me:

That was the cover for an album called "A Date With the Everly Brothers" (which you can still, of course, buy, though not easily with that cover). That's the one with "Cathy's Clown." The year is 1960, so I was 9 when I first gazed at that cover and tried to understand that concept that this was "A Date With the Everly Brothers." I had not yet acquired a record album of my own. That wouldn't happen until1962, when this picture would capture my girlish fantasies. "A Date With the Everly Brothers" was my sister's record, so she determined who would have which brother on this imaginary date of ours. I believe Dell chose Don, so Phil was mine.

Oh! Forget Cathy! And — what? — are the 2 of you sharing one girl, one girl who's not even good to you? Don't you think it's kind of sad, that you're treating me so bad? Or don't you even care? We care! And there are 2 of us! The Althouse Sisters! Where is this Date With the Everly Brothers?

Police investigated a "zombie" attack in Redruth, which turned out to be two friends off their faces on hooch and foaming at the mouths. A woman in Exeter said her horse's mane was been platted by an unseen being (check yer hands, love – it's probably you) and a frightened woman in Ilfracombe rang 999 to report finding a stick "which she can only describe as something maybe used in witchcraft." Or maybe just a stick.

Western news outlets are slowly picking up the story but I'd urge caution. North Korean media has made no reference to starved dogs, including in Kim's New Year's message – even though the chubby prince did describe his uncle as "filth" (and a Happy New Year to you, too, comrade!). Moreover, why were 120 hounds used when half a dozen would do? And why the audience of 300? It's all a bit James Bond, a bit shark-tank-in-an-underground-bunker.

He’s accused of gross negligence for building the frame of the fireplaces with combustible materials, instead of materials such as brick, and for not building any firebreaks inside the walls. Unchecked by firebreaks, the flames rocketed up to the attic. The ceiling eventually collapsed....

"This type of improvisation and casual design is a relic of the past," said Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University.... Tragedies are often followed by demands for prosecution and those demands are likely to be tied to this case as precedent... In that way, this could be an example of a hard case making bad law for architects in the future."

The two-year study, which involved 37 dog owners, 70 dogs, and 7,475 instances of the animals relieving themselves outside while their owners dutifully took notes, is the first demonstration of magnetic sensitivity in dogs. The authors write that their findings, which appeared last week in the journal Frontiers in Zoology, "open new horizons for biomagnetic research."

People like fattening foods, and when they can get them, they'll probably eat them, and they're going to tend to get fat. It's no mystery. The link goes to NPR.org, where there's a photo with the caption: "Government workers exercise at their office in Mexico City, August 2013. To counter the obesity epidemic, the city requires all government employees to do at least 20 minutes of exercise each day."

The top-voted comment over there is: "Can you imagine the backlash if the US government ordered all employees to do 20 minutes of exercise per day? People would scream about the waste of taxpayer money." I think what people would scream about is the government telling people what to do.

I'm noticing a weaselish use of the word "effectively." It came up twice in 2 days in NYT items that I happened to find myself blogging. Today, I saw David Brooks writing that "Colorado and Washington... have gone into the business of effectively encouraging drug use." It's like: They're not, but they are. And yesterday, I noticed this: "Mao Zedong... effectively eradicated" prostitution. The previous sentence says that he made "the rehabilitation of prostitutes, whom the Communists saw as victims of capitalist exploitation, a priority," but that didn't stop commenters from suspecting that Mao "effectively eradicated" prostitution by actually eradicating the women. What strange work that word is doing!

Using marijuana — he observed back then and again now — doesn't get you anywhere, unlike the "higher pleasures" in life that "involve a state of going somewhere, becoming better at something, learning more about something, overcoming difficulty and experiencing a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment." Your life should be a "process" of getting better and better — becoming a "more integrated, coherent and responsible" person, "using the powers of reason, temperance and self-control." Marijuana gums up that process.

The nuns don't want any connection — even a little paperwork — to contraception and seek an exemption. The source of religious exemptions is the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which requires relief from burdens on religion imposed by the federal government (unless those burdens are needed to serve a compelling interest). What is "perplexing" here?

The audacious complaint in this case is against the requirement that such groups sign a short form certifying that they have religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services, a copy of which would go to their third-party insurance administrator....

The certification requirement, an accommodation fashioned by the Obama administration to bolster the protection of religious exercise without depriving women of an important benefit, does not rise to a substantial burden.

That is, the burden upon which the nuns base their claim for religious accommodation was itself a religious accommodation.

Why didn't Congress simply write an exception to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act into the Affordable Care Act? The government would be home free. It wouldn't even have had to provide the certification work-around to accommodate the conscience of the nuns. The Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution doesn't require relief from burdens imposed by generally applicable laws that were not designed to target religion. The answer to the question is obvious: Congress scarcely squeezed the ACA through and couldn't bear any additional friction in the legislative process. RFRA was left as a source of future litigation, even as Congress made a show of catering to the young women who feel cared for when contraception is an entitlement.

Congress failed to deactivate RFRA, and the Democratic Party shored up power with its "war on women" rhetoric, and the result of those thoroughly political, tactical choices is that these nuns have a little legal ground to stand on.

Conservatives have become far too insular, too often rejecting the need to persuade those who don’t already agree with them, arguing instead that ever bloodier doses of red meat will grow the coalition. Liberals have become far too content with the myth of their uniqueness and the pretense that they are brave polymath iconoclasts who know what’s best for you better than you do.

Badly headlined because "going down" is only intended to mean in decline, but it has (presumably unintended) alternative meanings: 1. the violent sense, implying that attackers are taking it down (as in the phrase "You're going down"), and thus evincing dicey hostility, and 2. the sexual sense, which is silly, but the photo under the headline is of Phil Robertson — famous for graphically expressing his preference for classic penis-in-the-vagina sex — so that mental detour is easier than usual.

Mr. Scott objected to the clause in the sixth amendment, "No person religiously scrupulous shall be compelled to bear arms."... There are many sects I know, who are religiously scrupulous in this respect; I do not mean to deprive them of any indulgence the law affords; my design is to guard against those who are of no religion. It has been urged that religion is on the decline; if so, the argument is more strong in my favor, for when the time comes that religion shall be discarded, the generality of persons will have recourse to these pretexts to get excused from bearing arms.

When the time comes that religion shall be discarded... When did he imagine that time to be? I doubt if Valerie Tarico, the listicle author at Salon, is any more prescient than was Congressman Thomas Scott in 1789.

For the United States, which two years ago withdrew its forces from Iraq as officials claimed the country was on track to become a stable democracy, Anbar holds grave historical significance — as a place for America’s greatest losses, and perhaps its most significant success, of the long war. Nearly one-third of the American soldiers killed during the war died trying to pacify Anbar, and Americans fought two battles for control of Falluja, in the bloodiest street-to-street combat American troops had faced since Vietnam.

What they must do to avoid the fine is only to sign a certification allowing insurance companies to provide contraceptive coverage, but they are burdened by that intrusion on their religious principles.

Have you been waiting since the 60s for pot to become legal? Are you, like me, in your 60s and from the 60s and hoping that the day will arrive when you can walk into a nice little shop, buy some marijuana, and consume it without the need for any of the old rebellious spirit that enlivened us when we were Flower Children? Do you, unlike me, think that day has come if only you go to Colorado?

As Colorado becomes the first state in the nation to allow recreational marijuana sales beginning Jan. 1, a budding pool of "potrepreneurs" have high hopes for an influx of out-of-town pot tourists.

Colorado Highlife Tours, which promises “fun, affordable and discreet” cannabis-centered excursions, is expanding its private and public limo and bus tours.

“You’ll be able to buy a little pot here and there, see a commercial grow, visit iconic Colorado landmarks and take lots of pictures,” said company owner Timothy Vee. “It will be like a Napa Valley wine tour.”

As you may know, I'm a travel skeptic, and these potrepreneurs and "Highlife Tours" only heighten my aversion. Imagine these guys wrangling you with a crowd of shambling boomers and bullshitting about the fine varietals of local weed. But you could put together your own road trip to Colorado. In fact, Colorado is the main place I've headed on my personal road trips, even before I married Meade, who has family in Colorado. Despite our lack of general enthusiasm for travel, we do drive to Colorado, and now when we drive to Colorado, as we will again soon, you're going to think we're pot tourists.

That was back in 2011, wandering around Leadville, catching some shots of the scenery, including a pot shop — medical only back then. We intend to return to Colorado soon, but we're not going to enter these shops, now open for "recreational" users, and I don't like the fact that going to Colorado triggers a suspicion that that's what we're doing.

It's still a federal crime to possess marijuana, and if I were inclined to commit crimes, I wouldn't do it as conspicuously as openly traveling to Colorado, going into a shop where I may have to wait in a line of aging Boomer pot tourists, showing my ID, and perhaps appearing on surveillance cameras. I'd try to be inconspicuous, which means I'd stay home and use the same damned black market that's been available all along.

But I'm not inclined to commit crimes, and I haven't so much as touched an illegal drug since a stranger tried to pass me a joint when The Kinks played the Felt Forum in 1974, which was probably before the President of the United States even began taking drugs.

"She will be asked to explain more precisely where she stands on issues of income inequality, economic growth, spending, taxes, entitlements and the trade-offs that will face the next president. Will she be able to be true to the New Democrat ideals that brought her husband to power and also accommodate the energy pulsing through the party’s progressive wing? The answers should begin to come later this year, as she nears a decision about whether to run."

"At some point," Hillary, who hasn't spoken yet, will be asked to say something, something more precise, about all these things that she's refrained from speaking about for so long. At some point? At what point? Eventually there will be a point, and when it comes, what difference at this point does it make?

It's a style: Wait long enough and you can say the time has passed for addressing this problem. That's a conservative strategy by the way.

When you see ten troubles rolling down the road, if you don’t do anything, nine of them will roll into the ditch before they get to you.

The energy pulsing through the party’s progressive wing won't pulse forever. And when that throbbing tumescence abates, the calm steady woman will be there as ever, waiting for us all to acknowledge her rightful status as President of the United States.

IN THE COMMENTS: Tom Gallagher said: "Doesn't she need to write a book or two before running for president?" And I had to think: Has Hillary ever written a book?

It's going to be something like 6° in Green Bay on Sunday, so the desire to watch the game at home is possibly intense, but come on, it's Green Bay. I expect to see the fans out there with their shirts off. How can you not want to be there?

I know, Meade and I are in easy(ish) driving range, but Madison isn't on that list of local markets at risk of being blacked out. (Is it?)

The Chinese government’s approach to prostitution is inconsistent. After the Communist victory in 1949, Mao Zedong made the rehabilitation of prostitutes, whom the Communists saw as victims of capitalist exploitation, a priority. During his first years in power, he effectively eradicated the trade. But the introduction of market overhauls in the early 1980s led to a resurgence in prostitution, and up to six million women were estimated to be working in the sex industry in recent years, according to a United Nations report....

The indignities of incarceration do little to dissuade women who can earn more than $1,000 a month as prostitutes, triple the average income for unskilled laborers in China. Ms. Li, the single mother of two, said she was illiterate and could never make as much money in a conventional job.

IN THE COMMENTS: EDH says:

Seems like two separate policy issues: How to regulate the market activity of prostitution, and forced labor in the penal system.

And I say:

I know. It seems like the NYT intended to crank the reasoning forward a few steps and then didn't do it. There's a whole communism vs. capitalism theme. Mao "effectively eradicated" prostitution. Now, China, moving into capitalism, has women drawn into sex work because it pays 3x as much as other available work, and then they are imprisoned and used for unpaid labor (and also made to pay the costs of imprisonment), so both of these things have to do with a profit motive. But the article never says that. It begins and ends with "human interest" material about a particular woman folding paper flowers or sewing stuffed animals. Something really unformed about this article! Where are the human-interest details about the prostitutes Mao effectively eradicated?

The link goes to a podcast, and this part begins at 13:36. Unfortunately, there's no transcript. Also, the question-answerer is Dan Savage, and I already know some of you resist the charms of Dan Savage. Let's not get distracted by the difficulty of sitting through audio. (I recommend listening to podcasts when doing things — like putting on your makeup and making your coffee.) And let's not bother with the usual taking shots at Dan Savage. (We know about Dan Savage and the doorknobs, and I could lick a doorknob at night.) Let's get right onto the topic, which I will summarize for your convenience.

As for music, beginning today, you could put out recordings of "That’ll Be the Day," "Peggy Sue," "Great Balls of Fire," and "Wake Up, Little Susie," with the kind of freedom that you have with an ancient folk song.

A line of about 40 people stretched down the hallway, waiting patiently and without incident as Steve “Heyduke” Judish, a 58-year-old retired federal worker, stepped to a counter to become the first customer at the first retail store in Colorado to get its license last month.

Judish peeled off $30 cash and walked out with 1/8 ounce of Larry OG, a potent strain of marijuana that connoisseurs like for its euphoric rush. “It’s cool to be part of history,” he said with a grin. He had put his name on a list to be the first customer 14 hours earlier.

But, really, he said he had been waiting 40 years for the moment.

All us old Boomers, patiently waiting until we can go to the store for marijuana. Perhaps marijuana will lose its charm as younger folk get a look at the pot-shop clientele.

In Telluride, Lucas DaSilva of Georgia drove through the night and slept in his car with his dog Marley before settling at the front door of the Telluride Green Room around dawn. A few hours later, he emerged from the store $180 lighter but holding six grams of African Queen, Acapulco Gold and Bubble Gum strains of cannabis and several marijuana-infused edibles.

"I'm at a loss for words. Happy New Year!" he yelled, arms outstretched amidst cheers from the line. "This is history I just made. I can't believe it. Such a blessing."

Victor Davis Hanson has 3 theories: 1. "The zoo hypothesis suggests that American suburbanites are amused by exotic creatures," 2. People are "smugly satisfied that they are not like these uncouth white boys," and 3. It's "therapeutic" to experience, vicariously, the "glimpses, premodern though they may be, of unrestrained freedom."

In our upside-down world, the eighth-grade teacher understands that one wrong word, an ill-timed joke, a casual pat on the shoulder can end a career, pronto — while his punk student with the gang-banging parent who shouts profanity at him are mostly exempt from worry. The boss at the DMV accepts the fact that the whiff of a sexual-harassment suit, the rumor of an impending racial-discrimination allegation, the suggestion of inhospitality to the handicapped are more terrifying than the rowdy 16-year-old who pulls in to take his driving test in a monster truck. In our dreams it is better to be an ax man, where it’s Mother Nature, not the local diversity czar, who is after you.

The crabmen and lumberjacks don’t seem to worry about what they say or whom they offend — to the degree that such screw-it attitudes can be hinted about on politically correct camera.

The agents of political correctness do try to reach into the production of these reality shows (ineffectually, as we saw in the recent "Duck Dynasty" flap), but the point is that these shows depict (or at least purport to depict) a way of life that is (or seems to be) beyond the repressive forces.

Most of that extolls hemp, but there's a break in the tone at 2:43 for the warning: "This is hemp seed. Be careful how you use it, for to grow hemp legally, you must have a federal registration and tax stamp."

Freeze the frame at 2:52, and you'll see the word "marihuana" on the stamp, like this:

Meade says he wishes he had his grandfather's old stamp, and his dreams-from-my-grandfather ethos inspires me to believe that the best solution to the marijuana problem is to let individuals grow their own.

Here's this great New Yorker article "BUZZKILL/Washington State discovers that it’s not so easy to create a legal marijuana economy," detailing the problems of marijuana as a commercial product. My proposal is: Don't even try to make the illegal market legal. Destroy the market altogether. Abandon the fantasy of regulation and taxation and turn the much-desired product into a worthless commodity. Let weed be weed, with the true market value it would find if nature could take its course: $0.

Get you a lamp with ballast, get a 600 watt bulb
Fill in with rooted hemp clones; soon be outta your skull
You'll just lay there by the vaporizer while the moon is bright
Watch them buds a-fillin' out in the Colorado light.

Build you an "enclosed, locked space"
Build it in Littleton
Don't use no yard or windowsill,
Won't get the big photons
We'll just lay there by the vaporizer while the moon is bright
Watch them buds a-fillin' out in the Colorado light.

My daddy he grew hemp crops, my granddaddy he did too
We've paid all our hemp taxes since 1942
You'll just lay there by the vaporizer while the moon is bright
Watch them buds a-fillin' out in the Colorado light.

"Smug, self-righteous, egotistical, disingenuous, megalomaniacal, overwrought" are all good descriptions of Ms. Marcus' column. I don't care if Mr. Snowden is particularly engaging or lovable - what he lacks in Marcus' favorite qualities he makes up in pure unadulterated courage. He did what he truly believed was the right thing, the moral thing, the necessary thing. Ms. Marcus how dare you accuse Mr. Snowden of Orwellian "double think" when he has put his life on the line like Winston Smith, in order to expose the Orwellian "state-within-a-state" that the NSA has become? Not many people would have had the courage to do what Mr. Snowden did and he should be praised for it and not denigrated.

In 2005, Stewart was convicted of helping blind Egyptian cleric Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman communicate with followers while he was serving a life sentence for plotting to blow up landmarks in New York City....

Ms. Stewart, in a 12-page handwritten letter to the judge during the summer, said she did not want to die in prison, “a strange and loveless place,” as she put it. “I want to be where all is familiar — in a word, home.”

"We’ve got several penguins watching us, thinking 'what the hell are you doing stuck in our ice?.' The sky is a beautiful grey – it looks like it wants to have a bit of a snow. It’s the perfect Christmas, really."

You don't know what the penguins think, and you don't know what the sky wants. What else don't you know, scientists?

Serious science. Science is — according to the (unlinkable) OED — "The state or fact of knowing; knowledge or cognizance of something specified or implied; also, with wider reference, knowledge (more or less extensive) as a personal attribute." What then is "serious science"? Serious means "requiring earnest thought; demanding or characterized by careful consideration or application; performed with earnestness of purpose."

Get serious, then, scientists. Tell us only what you really know. The penguins have no concept of hell, and you have no line on what would constitute perfection in a Christmas. And don't lie about climate change. And by "lie" I mean, don't say anything more than what truly is science, and if you can do that convincingly and assiduously for the next 10 years, I will begin to believe that there is something called "serious science" that deserves to be thought capable of de-energizing the contrarians who are now distracting us, even as you yourself are distracted by the thoughts of penguins.

Mobile phones have transformed our world by seducing and delighting us. We installed bugging and tracking devices into our most intimate places, into ourselves. We did, willingly, what we could have resisted if we'd only known. Now, knowing, we can throw away these devices, but we won't. We love them too much.

I wanted to find a little video clip from "Breaking Bad," showing one of the many times a character on that show broke a cell phone. Of course, it wasn't an iPhone. Good luck twisting an iPhone in half with your bare hands. On that show, they always had the old clamshell-style phones, which are good for the drama/comedy of snapping open or shut or twisting into an untraceable shambles. I did find this clip showing "What Walter White Sold Before Meth" and I'll let you write the punchline for this post:

It's the way of the old, but I'm glad to be old — old and alive here on Planet Earth, with all you other Earthlings, young and old, who have made it this far.

2014. That's the first time I'm writing the number in the new year. Unluckly '13 is over. We survived. If you are reading this, you survived. Congratulations! What are you going to do with the next morsel of life that's been granted you?

Me, I'm going to blog, blog my way through this morning, and put various things in order. For example, I'm finishing a task of taking everything moveable out of the kitchen, cleaning all the surfaces, then putting back only what deserves to occupy the real estate of the shelves, with each item placed in the most convenient and least annoying way. So the broken panini grill and the second-best toaster no longer wedge in the stack of cake and pie pans, and if the day ever comes when we do make a cake or pie again — and 2 years of low-carb eating do make this a January 1st with no need to make the cliché weight-loss resolution — we won't have to clatter through clutter to get to the requisite housewares.

And I'm going through the email that piled up overnight. There's one titled "Make an impression, Ann," with the timestamp December 31, 2013 11:01:29 PM CST. It's from Democrats <democraticparty@democrats.org>. The Party knows I'm in the Central Time Zone. It's already a minute and 29 seconds into the new year in the Eastern Time Zone, where I picture it situated, but they know where I am, and they know I've got almost an hour left to make a donation in 2013, not that it'd be tax deductible, so what do I care about squeezing in donations in the last moments of '13?

Telling me to "Make an impression" when you think I've got nothing to do on New Year's Eve but check email is kind of depression-inducing. Thanks a lot, Democrats. I mean, I'm glad to be old and alive, glad to have survived into another year on Earth, another year in the United States of America, but you guys haven't done your part (or you have and I just don't like it).

So here's the image the Party throws at me pre-midnight, the first photograph I gaze upon in 2014:

The hell?!! You're giving me the "not impressed" face?! I need to "Make an impression"? I need to "fix that" in my last "few minutes" of the year when you failed so miserably?

I know. I know. I am not the target audience. They know I'm in the Central Time Zone, but they don't know how I really feel about them, even though I've been giving clues, visible to all who are on line, for the past 10 years. The true Democratic Party faithful experience a merged identity with the Party and a weird delusion that the President stands outside of the Party and outside of politics, looking on, like some god. God is watching and we haven't done enough. Be grateful that He is still good humored in his disapproval — good humored and adorable and goofing around with pretty ladies and awesome. Donate!

Oh, I'm donating. I'm donating this blog post. I'm donating to the joy and discernment of the people of Planet Earth, here in the pre-dawn of the first day of the new year, 2014.

"You got to marry these girls when they are about 15 or 16, they’ll pick your ducks. You need to check with mom and dad about that of course."So said Phil Robertson — back in the news, not because he said something edgy again, but because his antagonists dug up a 5-year old video. It took me a while to grasp that "pick your ducks" means pluck the ducks that you bring home (and not choosing which ducks to shoot). Robertson, we're told in the linked article, married his wife in 1966 when she was 16 (and he was 20). They'd been dating since she was 14 (and he was 18).

This material is right there in Phil Robertson's autobiography, "Happy, Happy, Happy," which has been out since last May. I have it in my Kindle. At page 52:

Miss Kay was the perfect woman for me. I was sixteen and she was fifteen when we were married. Nowadays some people might frown on people getting married that young, but I knew that if you married a woman when she was fifteen, she would pluck your ducks. If you waited until she was twenty, she would only pick your pockets. Now, that’s a joke, and a lot of people seem to laugh at it, but there is a certain amount of truth in it. If you can find a nice, pretty country girl who can cook and carries her Bible, now, there’s a woman. She might even be ugly, but if she cooks squirrels and dumplings, then that’s the woman you go after.

Seems like he's been telling that pluck-a-duck joke for a long time. Anyway, how old was Phil when he married Kay and how old was she? The stories in the news and in the autobiography don't match. And what was the law in Louisiana at the time? I think (looking casually on line at what the law is today) that if you're under 18, you need both parents' consent, and if you're under 16, you need a court order.

There is no debating the toughness of the NFC West over any division, especially the NFC North.

The 49ers would earn the third seed in a properly reshuffled playoff system, hosting the sixth-seeded Packers instead of going to Green Bay. The current rules are actually punishing San Francisco for playing in the toughest division in football in favor of a team that won the league's weakest.

Aw, but at least it's warming up in Green Bay. They say it's getting up to maybe 11° by Sunday.

If you don't like it, then win your division. If you don't like missing the NCAA tournament, then win your conference. These playoffs and tournaments are supposed to find the best team, and if you can't win the regular season then don't complain about your seeding.

Squeals Melissa Harris-Perry, on her MSNBC show, going to a break, just after displaying picture of Mitt Romney's family that includes a black adopted child and inviting her panel to "caption" it, which they do with mockery like, "It really sums up the diversity of the Republican party, the RNC. At the convention, they find the one black person."

The line I quote in the post title, above, was delivered without a trace of awareness that the segment she'd just overseen would prompt the cry "Hey, that was racist!" I have no idea what the "Hey, was that racist?" stuff after the break turned out to be or whether Melissa Harris-Perry — if we were to look more broadly at her efforts — has been doing any good work in the enterprise of making race consciousness something that can be joked and bantered about in a relaxed and friendly way.

Quite aside from racial politics, I thought children were off limits. Here you have an MSNBC panel segment planned around laughing at a baby. We scrupulously avoid using Obama's daughters as raw material for jokes. Why didn't anyone at MSNBC nix this?

This article (linked at Drudge) doesn't say, other than to predict it's "likely to be expensive." Rachel Gilette, a National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws lawyer, said:

"I did talk to a retailer yesterday who had just set his price points, and they were about double of what you have been able to get medical on the market for the last year... So it is going to be more expensive at least for the foreseeable future."

Theran Snyder, who runs a shop called Kine Mine in Idaho Springs, won't say exactly what he'll charge the new nonmedical customers (and whatever it is, there will be 31.9% tax on top of it). Currently, the medical customers pay $225 per ounce for medical marijuana, and, citing worries about short supply, Snyder plans to charge the nonmedical people much more:

"Obviously the way we're planning on controlling our inventory is with price, and unfortunately that means we're going to be charging a premium."

Also obvious is the incentive to users to continue to seek medical status and/or to remain in the black market.

"Climate change scientists say: 'Where's the ice?' Seismologists might ask for their drinks to be 'shaken and not stirred.' Microbiologists request just a small one. Neuroscientists ask for their drinks 'to be spiked.' Scientists studying the defective gubernaculum say: 'Put mine in a highball,' and finally, social scientists say: 'I'd like something soft.' When paying at the bar, geneticists say: 'I think I have some change in my jeans." And at the end of the evening a shy benzene biochemist might say to his companion: 'Please give me a ring.'"

The passengers are not all scientists. Some are "paying members of the public." Oh, those people who just need to go everywhere, eh? People with "bucket lists." I suppose they want to pay to go up in space too. Will they have to chip in for the helicopter rescue or whatever else is going to be needed and/or will they sue the shipping company?

Even as someone who was seriously skeptical of [David] Perlmutter’s story, after reading his 336 pages — and watching his whole YouTube channel and most every TV appearance — I have found myself hesitating around grain. His message is so ardently and unwaveringly delivered. That is how one-sided pop-science works. Katz wrote a tongue-in-cheek case that the 1974 advent of the Post-it note was the cause of the obesity pandemic, to show how easily correlations can be spun. If I read 336 pages on the evils of Post-its, I might set our office supply room on fire....

When a person advocates radical change on the order of eliminating one of the three macronutrient groups from our diets, the burden of proof should be enormous....

Cutler was pretty good in the Bears’ season-ending 33-28 loss to the Packers that reminded us, above all, that Aaron Rodgers is as good as it gets when it counts....

You wouldn’t think what the Packers accomplish should figure in Cutler’s future, but it does because Rodgers and the Packers aren’t going away. Both Cutler and Rodgers are 30, but Cutler is seven months older than his rival.

And Cutler can’t beat the Packers. He’s now 1-9 in his career against them, including the playoffs....

AND: Here's the University of Wisconsin football team, watching the Packers game at a hotel in Florida, forlorn and then jubilant as Randall Cobb's touchdown wins the game:

(There's one Bears fan there, right in the middle, nicely revealed in the slo-mo repeat.)

A basic understanding of how language works should be part of what every educated person knows....

[A]t least in the U.S., my suggestion would be to turn away from English departments, and pursue a plan based on an alliance of linguists with people in computer science, psychology, statistics, medicine, law, sociology, business, etc., who increasingly see linguistic analysis (e.g. in the form of "text mining" or "text analytics") as an interesting object of study in itself, and as a means to enable research on other (applied or fundamental) topics. This alliance — which eventually might even include some people from Digital Humanities — is a plausible basis for college-level courses in "grammar" as practical text analysis.

There are more links in that passage than the one that I copied, by the way. That one just jumped out at me. There's no link, however, on "Digital Humanities," which puzzled me, so I googled and found a number of things, including — in The Chronicle of Higher Education — "Stop Calling It 'Digital Humanities'" and an easy-to-absorb Wikipedia article. Excerpt:

Because she's from New York City? But almost half of the Supreme Court Justices are from New York City, including both the other female Justices. The male is Justice Scalia.

While it may be difficult to imagine Justice Scalia on the stage in Times Square, Justice Sotomayor has taken on a more public role as a justice, especially as she promoted her recent memoir, “My Beloved World.” She has doled out career advice on “Sesame Street,” appeared on “The Daily Show” and even salsa-danced with a Univision anchor.

Justice Scalia doesn't take a public role?! He's always out and about spreading the word about Originalism and so forth. If he's not manning the Times Square crystal button and not on "Sesame Street" and "The Daily Show," I think that has more to do with liberal media ostracizing nonliberals than anything else.

Justice Sotomayor was selected because of her inspirational story of rising from a humble background to become the first Hispanic justice on the court, said Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance. She has encouraged others to dream big, a nice message for a new year, he said.

Anderson Cooper will host the televised party in Times Square, with performances by Miley Cyrus, Melissa Etheridge and others. Viewers should not expect to see Ms. Cyrus twerking near Justice Sotomayor. The justice will have a private space at the event, Mr. Tompkins said.

Humility, big dreams and inspiration, and the continuing subordination of women (in the form of Miley's plastic-clad ass, but not too close to the risen-from-humility Supreme Court Justice, who will be encased in an enclosure of sublime respect with her crystal button).

1. "A general emancipation of slaves ought to be 1. gradual. 2. equitable & satisfactory to the individuals immediately concerned. 3. consistent with the existing & durable prejudices of the nation... To be consistent with existing and probably unalterable prejudices in the U.S. freed blacks ought to be permanently removed beyond the region occupied by or alloted to a White population."

2. "As far as lenity can be extended to these unfortunate creatures I wish you to do so; subordination must be obtained first, and then good treatment."

3. "I can only say that no man living wishes more sincerely than I do to see the abolition of (slavery)… But when slaves who are happy & content to remain with their present masters, are tampered with & seduced to leave them… it introduces more evils than it can cure."

4. "(God) works most inscrutably to the understandings of men; - the negro is torn from Africa, a barbarian, ignorant and idolatrous; he is restored civilized, enlightened, and a Christian."

5. "You tell me, friends, of the liberation of the colored people of the South. But have you thought of the millions of Southern white people who have been liberated by the war?"

The link comes via Metafilter, and I can't vouch for the accuracy of all of the quotes, especially ##4 and 5. Apocryphal?

"... tales so compelling that they help drive up enrollment, marginalize Republican repeal efforts and erase memories of this fall’s HealthCare.gov debacle."

Shouldn't that just be the internal memo about the campaign? Saying that's what you're about to do is practically the opposite of doing it. And I think the story only came out in that form — over at Politico — because actually doing it is not possible, not with the raw material they have. Perhaps they expected the media to do it for them, in which case the question is, why isn't the media doing their work for them, as usual? And I'm guessing the media can't do it either, because even if you are inclined to sift through the raw material and find the good things, you can only cherry-pick where there are some cherries. Politico needs to write about something, and this was all they had, the desperate fantasy of launching a campaign that can't possibly happen.

“Go on,” said Lennie. “How’s it gonna be? We gonna get a little place.”
“We’ll have a cow,” said George. “An’ we’ll have maybe a pig an’ chickens . . . an’ down the flat we’ll have a . . . little piece alfalfa——”
“For the rabbits,” Lennie shouted.
“For the rabbits,” George repeated.
“And I get to tend the rabbits.”
“An’ you get to tend the rabbits.”
Lennie giggled with happiness. “An’ live on the fatta the lan’.”

December 29, 2013

"It's knee on shin, so when he goes to kick, you put your knee on his shin... It has happened in sparring and guys take a minute off and walk around, and at least it stops them from kicking you. To break someone's leg, I've never done that before. I didn't want to see Anderson get hurt like that."

Fox News Sunday had a good segment today with 2 members of the House Intelligence Committee, the Republican Mike Rogers and the Democrat Adam Schiff talking about the NYT article about Bengazi, reporting on its investigation that "turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault" and that "it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam."

Drudge isn't the loftiest place on the internet, but this is beneath him:

The linked article, in the Wall Street Journal, makes no mention of the Clinton impeachment and gives us no reason to associate deBlasio with any of Clinton's misdeeds and lies. Clinton is a former President, and it's a decent honor for deBlasio to have him do the swearing in.

Drudge's highlighting of the impeachment is gratuitous and stupid, and that headline has been at the top of the page since yesterday, so there's been plenty of time for Drudge to realize it's not up to his usual standards (which include lots of room for ridicule and cheap shots).

Now, if Drudge had phrased the headline to refer to oaths — Clinton lied under oath and now he's administering an oath — I would have approved. Since Clinton was impeached for lying under oath, the appropriate connection was within reach, but Drudge didn't quite get there and ends up looking mean-spirited and flailing.

... now faces a year in prison and critics who say things like "It would be justice if the cat survived and she didn't survive prison" and "Put her in a Rubbermaid storage container for a day... but be nice and bore a few holes so she can breathe. Do it in a public area so people can walk by and say 'ha, ha, ha' to her."

... i don't want to look at your fucking video to consume your content. I have no problem with videos, i just think they're the wrong medium for a lot of things. Video of something specifically happening, or some visual/multimedia art? Cool. Video documentary of a situation or about a person? fine. Stupid video of someone talking about something with a couple still photos overlaid a few times? Fuck. OFF.

There's an "idiot switch" safety step that's being skipped here. People need to be asking themselves "What would be missing from this if it was simply written out, maybe with a couple inline images?"...

I think unworthy is a far more sinister cancer than even buzzfeed. All the time people send me links to stuff on there and go "omg check this out". Click through at my desk at work/on the loo/etc and go "oh, video, nope"....

You want me to watch a 4:30 video of something i could read in like 45 to 60 seconds even if it was towards the thick end of content these videos ever have?...

There's a lot of pasta sandwich going on here. It's just the wrong type of content for the media.

Things were different back in the days of Rickrolling, when you didn't know you were clicking to a video, and as soon as you saw that you got to a video (that video), you knew you were tricked and you clicked away. Now you know by the teaser that you are getting sent to a video and you're somehow supposed to believe that if you spent a little time watching the material roll out — in that annoying, exasperating way that video subjects you to its time frame — you really will get to experience the promised feelings. Your heart will explode into a sunburst of tiny sparkles or whatever.

You'd think that by now — at the portal to 2014 — we'd be steely and unteaseable. Who would waste 8 seconds anticipating that this video will restore your faith in humankind?

***

Are you like me? When you read the words "if you spent some time watching the material roll out...
you really will get to experience the promised feelings," did you switch over to thinking about Obamacare?

I'd like to think that by now — at the portal to 2014 — we'd be steely and unteaseable.

A series of eight private meeting rooms that are exact replicas of some of [Airbnb]’s coolest listings from around the world; an atrium with a massive living wall climbing up the brick facade and a Rear Window-esque view into the aforementioned meeting rooms; and, most importantly, a conference room inspired by the War Room in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, complete with a circular table and overhead lighting.

Picture yourself in a meeting here...

... listening to the grandiose maunderings of people who are sure you can't possibly feel oppressed.